“When I got up in the morning, I was to go home, so I slowly started packing my things. I went downstairs to have breakfast, I saw the Daily Mail there, and the big headline ‘Invasion of Czechoslovakia’ with huge photos of tanks - it was utterly shocking, I still remember that. You couldn’t ever imagine that if it didn’t happen to you. It was very depressing to me, I spent several nights when I couldn’t sleep and didn’t what to do. Mum was already married to my stepfather at the time. They wrote me a telegram or phoned me to say that the family [I was with] should certainly not let me return to Czechoslovakia.”
“In my youth people like that weren’t talked about much because they were patriots – the Communists didn’t like that much. When I discovered what personality Destinn was, how wonderful a woman she was and that she had been in England for many years, I thought about what we could do to make sure people don’t forget her. A year after the exhibition my friends and I agreed to hold a big concert. And Lady Milena [Grenfell-Baines] helped us. I was writing an interview with Libor Pešek for Xantypa at the time – he was chief conductor in Liverpool back then. I told him about the idea, that I wanted to do something for Emmy Destinn, and he told me: ‘Do it, I’ll help you.’ And really, he became the first patron, and Lady Milena was the second. He helped ensure that Eva Urbanová, Štefan Margita, and Zdena Kloubová would come here for the first concert, plus the musicians here from England.”
“I was probably the only Czech girl in the whole of Norfolk. They wrote about me in the newspapers, people knew that I was the Czech girl. People wrote asking for permission to meet with me, they brought me presents. They tried to support me mentally. When I tried to apply for college, they accepted me even though they didn’t have a specific place where I could learn English. I studied O Levels in English, French, Russian, not too seriously - I was there to learn English. Then I got fed up of life in the countryside; I imagined England to be London, swing, and rock-and-roll. Finally, I went to London, and I’ve been in London since 1969.”
“I didn’t want to give up my Czech citizenship under any circumstances. I married quite early, and at the time wives were immediately given residence permission and I think even citizenship after two years. [...] I kept my Czech citizenship, so I have dual nationality. The Czechs didn’t want to issue me with an emigrant passport, they wanted me to renounce my citizenship. They boycotted me for eleven years - I couldn’t even return for a visit. I had a paper somewhere from Ostrava, in which a policeman declared that if I crawled in here, I was to stay here as well. [...] First I married an Englishman; the marriage fell apart after some years. Later I married a Czech, that’s why my name’s Karas. I married a Czech in England, so I took his name. [...] I prefer to use Karasová in the Czech Republic, but it’s Karas here.”
“Czech music links us with home. Lots of emigrants think that they can go back if they want to. It’s not that simple when you’ve been living for forty or however many years in a different country, where you’ve raised your children. Your view and approach to life have changed. It’s hard to go back, but the soul remains Czech.”
Jarmila Karas, née Blažková, was born on 22 July 1948 in Ostrava. Her parents then divorced and she grew up in Ostrava; she moved to Prague to attend secondary school. Her father started a new family in Slovakia, her mother emigrated to Australia in the mid-1960s. The witness visited Norfolk, England, on an invitation in summer 1968. She decided not to return to Czechoslovakia following the invasion in August 1968; she lived in London from 1969. She tried her hand at various jobs, among others, she was a freelance journalist and photographer. After 1989 she started working with Czech media. Jarmila Karasová also organised various cultural events for the Czech expatriate community in London. She established the Emmy Destinn Foundation, which organises singing competitions for young classical singers and promotes the interpretation of classical music of Czech provenance. In 2008 her activities caused her to be awarded the Artis Bohemiae Amicis by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
